JMB first shot to prominence in Bangladesh when it conducted a coordinated bombing attack on August 17, 2005, with more than 400 small blasts in 63 of the country's 64 districts.

People help an unidentified injured person after a group of gunmen attacked Dhaka attackCredit:
Associated Press

Many of those bombs targeted secular courts, which the JMB claims are inspired by Satan

"He was hanged to death at 10:30 pm (1630 GMT) in Khulna jail," Khulna Police Commissioner Nibhas Chandra Majhi told AFP, adding that there was heavy security around the jail to prevent any violence.

Islam, also known as Arif, was one of seven senior JMB officials, including founding leader Shaikh Abdur Rahman, sentenced to death for a bomb attack on a minibus that killed two lower court judges on November 14, 2005.

Arif was sentenced in absentia and was not detained until July 2007. He has been held in Khulna jail ever since. In August the Supreme Court dismissed his final appeal.

20 hostages killed in a siege at a cafe in Bangladesh

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His execution comes as Bangladeshi security forces push a deadly new crackdown against Islamist extremists following the cafe attack that has shaken the image of Bangladesh as a moderate Muslim nation.

Since July, police have shot dead nearly 40 suspected extremists including JMB's new leader Tamim Chowdhury, a Canadian citizen of Bangladesh descent who allegedly masterminded the cafe carnage.

As part of the crackdown, Bangladesh's courts have also fast-tracked prosecution of Islamist extremists, scores of whom were already facing death sentences and languishing in the country's jails.